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The Covid-19 pandemic presents unprecedented challenges for our education system. Our overriding priorities are ensuring the health and wellbeing of children, young people and staff and maintaining a continuity of learning wherever possible whilst schools are closed, as well as planning and preparing for a recovery phase.

We remain fully committed to publishing the review of implementation of additional support for learning which has been independently chaired by Angela Morgan. However, as we continue to focus on the overriding priorities in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, we are unable to give a clearer indication of when the report will be published at this time.

This will be kept under constant review and a further update will be provided in due course.

The Scottish Government’s response to each of the University and College Union's points is as follows:

Work around the financial impact of COVID-19 is being progressed as a priority and we are working with the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) to build as full an understanding as possible of the scale of the risk facing the further and higher education sector.

The Deputy First Minister has highlighted that the Scottish Government will do everything possible to ensure Scotland’s institutions remain world leaders and key drivers of the economy in the wake of the disruption around COVID-19. We have also committed that whatever Barnett consequentials come to Scotland through funding announcements for particular sectors due to the impacts of Covid 19, will be passed on in full.

Ministers will also continue to ask the UK Government to recognise the scale of the impact of Covid-19 on the higher education sector, and for HM Treasury to ensure appropriate fiscal support is made available.

Requiring institutions to work cooperatively and cross-sectorally to protect the interests of students and local communities:

I have established the Further and Higher Education Covid-19 Ministerial Leadership Group to provide collective leadership to the FE and HE sectors’ responses, highlight and communicate action underway, agree and progress priority areas, and discuss longer-term impacts and recovery planning. This group is comprised of representatives from Scottish Government, its agencies, sector representatives from community learning, colleges, universities and unions, including the UCU.

The Group provides a forum for a collective view to be taken on both challenges and solutions, and allows us to take a collaborative approach to planning for the future of tertiary education in Scotland following this crisis.

Ensure access to properly resourced lifelong learning which ensures people of all ages can access the learning they need:

The Scottish Government is supporting the Community Learning and Development (CLD) sector - youth, adult learning and community development workers - to continue providing services and offer support to learners most affected by the pandemic.

To support people who have been furloughed or made redundant as a result of Covid-19 and are seeking to develop new and existing skills, Skills Development Scotland (SDS) and the Open University have designed and established a new My World of Work portal, linked to a coordinated programme of open learning materials, which launched on Monday 27 April: https://www.myworldofwork.co.uk/learn-and-train/find-free-online-courses . This site will join up with the Welsh and UK Government sites and its material will be further developed with learning providers over the coming weeks.

Ensuring that staff working for outsourced companies providing services to higher education institutions receive the same protections as directly employed staff:

Central to our Fair Work approach is the expectation that employers should work to ensure workers are treated fairly and that concerns from employees are taken seriously. However, universities have autonomy on all staffing issues. Furthermore the bulk of employment law is reserved to Westminster and therefore cannot be changed by Scottish Ministers.

Protecting educational capacity by confirming that furlough arrangements will apply to all staff currently employed by universities, including those on insecure contracts:

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) is reserved to Westminster and operated by HMRC on behalf of HM Treasury. The Scottish Government has welcomed the scheme, as it potentially helps to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 and we encourage institutions to give full consideration to making an application to the CJRS. However, it is for each university to determine whether to apply and the nature of its own application.

Lobbying the UK government to extend the one-year visa extension scheme being offered to NHS staff to all current visa holders:

The Scottish Government recognises the crucial importance of non-UK citizens to Scotland’s economy and society.

On 24 March the Home Office announced updated guidance for visa holders both in the UK and abroad, in light of Covid 19 circumstances. Further information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-advice-for-uk-visa-applicants-and-temporary-uk-residents . The Scottish Government is continuing to engage with the Home Office and the devolved administrations regarding a range of migration issues, including extending leave to remain to all migrants, regardless of their immigration status.

The Scottish Government wants young people to be able to choose from the same learning opportunities regardless of background or circumstance.

Under paragraphs 5 and 6 of the Education Maintenance Allowances (Scotland) Regulations 2007, it is stated that all applicants who have been given some form of legal leave to enter or remain in the UK are eligible to apply for Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), provided they also satisfy the other EMA eligibility criteria, such as:

• having a household income under the EMA threshold (where the household income is £24,241 or less before tax for households with one dependent child or £26,884 before tax for households with more than one dependent child.
• being of age -recipients will normally be aged between 16 and 19 years (inclusive), and
• be taking part in an eligible course of learning.

Our response to the consultation on the masterplan was informed by our existing energy policy, and by our planning policies as set out in National Planning Framework 3 (2014).

We are currently preparing National Planning Framework 4. This will take into account more recent wider Scottish Government policies, including our climate change targets, and our energy policy which recognises that innovative use of hydrocarbons could play a role in reducing emissions including as part of a hydrogen future scenario. We expect to lay a draft National Planning Framework 4 in the Scottish Parliament for consultation and scrutiny in 2021.

(a) Additional Support Needs (ASN) Teachers - Full Time Equivalents

The following table sets out the full time equivalent of additional support for learning teachers in each authority in 2019.

As this is an operational matter relating to account management information, I have asked the Chief Executive of Scottish Enterprise to respond to you directly.

SEPA does not hold specific information relating to the scale of use of aluminium-based flocculants in the construction industry since 2015. Where a construction company applies to SEPA to use aluminium-based product in its wastewater treatment, then where a potential risk is identified, SEPA follows the same procedure as described in the answer to question S5W-27671 on 12 March 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

Under its standard regulatory guidance (WAT-SG-13, available on its website), SEPA discourages the use of aluminium dosing due to its toxicity. Aluminium dosing at wastewater treatment works should only be used in situations where ferric dosing is impracticable. The operator also needs to provide full justification for the use of aluminium. If aluminium is proposed, the standards to be followed are those set out in SEPA's regulatory method (WAT-RM-12), which will determine discharge limits. However, to limit discharge levels in high dilution situations, a backstop discharge limit of 10mg/l dissolved aluminium may need to be used.

Where an aluminium-based product is proposed for use in municipal wastewater treatment, SEPA uses a tiered approach to assess the level of risk that the substance's use may pose the environment. This requires the operator in the first instance to share details of the process, the chemicals used and their properties (through for example a safety datasheet). If this information is not sufficient to demonstrate safe use, SEPA would require further information on the process and specific details like discharge and receiving water flow rates, for example. This information could then be used to assess the risk a chemical’s use poses to the environment, as the result of the environmental exposure versus the intrinsic chemical hazard (e.g. the risk quotient as defined by predicted environmental concentration divided by predicted no-effect concentration). SEPA may ask the operator to derive this, but may do so itself if necessary. Further information may then be required if a risk is indicated in an iterative process to refine the risk assessment. If safe use cannot be demonstrated, restrictions may be placed on the use of the substance.

Scottish Water have over 1,800 wastewater treatment works across Scotland. However, only a small proportion of these use aluminium as part of the waste water treatment process and it has used an average of around 2.5 million litres of chemicals containing Aluminium per annum over the last 5 years.

In terms of whether the company is required to conduct aluminium assessments, I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-27671 on 12 March 2020. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .